


Substitutions

by Sally_Port



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sally_Port/pseuds/Sally_Port
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diets suck</p>
            </blockquote>





	Substitutions

Maggie had talked once -- about how before the blackout, when food had been plentiful -- she had been trying to watch her weight. She told Charlie about things like low-fat cheese and artificial sweeteners and soy milk, that had been around so you could sub out all the things that made food taste good and try to pretend you were still getting what you wanted.

She hadn't understood why anyone would want to do something like -- though she'd also grown up with the daily struggle to get enough calories to be able to survive -- let alone put on weight. Laying on her back, starting into dark eyes and a stubbled chin, she thought she finally understood.

When you wanted what you couldn't have, sometimes you took the closest thing to it. And when it didn't satisfy you, you could at least try to tell yourself it was good enough.

Not that the sex hadn't been good. He'd been willing. Enthusiastic even. He'd seemed surprised that she'd been so aggressive but had just gone with it. And she had been grateful. But now, limbs sprawled across the blanket, shoulders still touching, all she could think was it was the wrong set of shoulders. She's had plenty of time, back-to-back in fights with the right set. They'd never allowed tenderness between them. But pressed together in fighting positions, on rooftops, she knew what they felt like and no amount of trying to delude herself was going to turn whatever soy-water was going on into good, fresh cream.

In other words, her desperate hope that her increasing attraction to Bass wasn't just the fact that she'd not gotten laid in months. She'd told herself that was all. That she couldn't possibly be drawn to the man she still blamed for the death of her father and brother. That the horror she felt every time she looked at him. . .well, that had been replaced by a sneaking desire to be around him every chance she could get. Sure, she lied to herself and pretended she didn't. But every chance for a fight had been an excuse to be next to him, to actually touch him. To allow that strange communication they seemed to be able to do when it was just the two of them and a bunch of targets. Sure, it wasn't his and Miles' casual naming cities that she'd told herself hadn't made her jealous. But then again, did she want to be just another version of Miles. Maybe what they had was special all on its own.

But she couldn't let herself think that. Because that would be wrong. And now, with this, she'd just placed him firmly off limits. Though a small part of her wondered what exactly Miles and Rachel were doing at that exact moment and if it they could get past it, so could she. If she really wanted to. Which she didn't.

But the words that came tumbling out didn't sound like her. It was all about loosing sides (she's been on the loosing side again when they'd been fighting Monroe and look how that had turned out) and dead inside a year cynicism that sounded nothing like herself. She sounded like Miles. She sounded like Bass. She sounded like her Rachel. How the hell had that happened?

But a part of her found peace in the thought of death. She'd be with Danny, Ben, Nora, Father Nicholas, her barely-remembered grandmother (though if Randall Flynn was there too, she was punching him in the face). And moreover, when she was dead, she wouldn't have to deal with wanting something she wasn't suppose to want. There wouldn't be that desperate sick feeling in her stomach every time she looked at him that had nothing to do with hating him.

Why couldn't it have been an itch that anyone could have scratched? How the hell was it possible that she was having a hard time not calling his son Saccharine instead of Connor. She wasn't even totally sure what that had been except it had something to do with fake-sugar. She wondered if foods baked with it tasted as empty as she felt.

Empty wasn't even the same as guilty. That would imply an emotion she didn't know if she was capable of feeling. They hadn't done anything wrong. They just hadn't done anything right either.

And as a bellow cut across the clearing, her stomach contracted. The primal rage in the right voice (she hadn't even though about how the voice had been as wrong as the shoulders, which had been as wrong as the hands) made every nerve ending in her body contract. It didn't matter that he was furious with her -- with them both. All that mattered, she realized, as she sat up, blanket clutched to her chest, was that he was there.

And if she had any doubts that something was VERY wrong with her. . .well, now she knew for sure.

**Author's Note:**

> Some people may wonder why I tagged Charlie/Bass when the story opens just after Charlie/Connor sex. But quite frankly, this story isn't about Charlie/Connor. Even if he's the one lying next to her while she's thinking all this.
> 
> More initial horror -- watching last night's episode -- didn't last long. Because quite frankly, I can totally see this being the opening salvo for the eventual Charlie/Bass pairing.
> 
> Granted, maybe I'm reading too much into it or getting my hopes up but here's a few reasons why it could still work.
> 
> \- Nice people do not sleep with their kid's ex/their ex's dad (if you can call "you were cute, I was bored" even an ex). Sebastian Monroe is not a nice person. This has been established. In fact, this is the reason everyone loves this character. On Charlie's side, her mother and father's brother are sleeping together so her family kind of has a history of going where it shouldn't on both sides.
> 
> \- It took about 15 seconds post-coitus for their conversation to be about Monroe.
> 
> \- Could Bass have come up with any lamer reasons when lecturing Connor on why he shouldn't have slept with Charlie. They were pretty pathetic.
> 
> \- It would not be hard at all to write in that she wanted Bass, realized how fucked up it was that she wanted Bass so she thought she could replace him with Connor.
> 
> \- He called her Charlotte again. He hasn't called her Charlotte for a really long time. In fact, other than using her name when talking about her to other people, he hasn't called her anything.
> 
> \- The look on his face after she walked away after asking about the mercenaries. He turns to watch her. And the look. Wow (thank you, David Lyons, for keeping my hopes up, and for being such a great actor).


End file.
